In our current research on experience design techniques, we’ve seen the most successful organizations share something: a solid vision of where the experience of their design is going.

I’ve defined a vision as a collective perception of the difference between what today’s experience is and what tomorrow’s experience should be.

You can think of a vision as a stake in the sand on the horizon. You can’t get there today, but you can clearly see it in the distance. You can then see how every step you take is either bringing you towards the vision or taking you away.

When everyone on the team shares the same stake, the entire team can move together. They can hold discussions where someone asks, “Is new idea getting us closer to our vision or not?” They can try out ideas and then decide, “Wait, that didn’t get us in the direction we wanted to go at all.”

We’re finding having a solid vision is really key to success. Do you know what the experience of your design will be like in 5 years? In 10? Does everyone on the team share the same perception?

Once teams nail down a solid vision, we’ve seen the decisions about what to do and how to do it become tremendously easier to make and understand.

7 Responses to “The Experience Vision”

[...] As I mentioned yesterday, having your team share a solid experience vision is a key element to successful experience design. However, an experience vision is not the same as a “vision statement.” [...]

[...] Posted in Thoughts, biscuitmedia, biscuitmedia web design, Clients, Cool by Stewart Steel on June 20, 2006. I’ve been back on the UIE website looking over their fantastic content and this wee article on vision statements caught my eye. It’s timely as we’re in the last stages of developing our objectives for biscuitmedia for the next year and we’re excited about what that holds. [...]

[...] most successful of our clients in this endeavor have had great luck when they’ve put together a solid vision of what key downstream users experience, then talk about the idealized vision for the direct [...]

[...] It explains how a storytelling method can help unify teams and create better products. See also The Experience Vision, by Jared Spool. (Ed: See also Telling Your Website’s Story with Sketchboarding)Don’t [...]